


sea & space

by eluna



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, POV Klaus Baudelaire, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:34:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eluna/pseuds/eluna
Summary: And Klaus would have been perfectly happy to continue raising her there on the island with Violet and Sunny, but a deal is a deal, and they’d all agreed after Baby Be was born only to stay until the next Decision Day, when the tide rose enough that they could leave. Klaus knows that leaving is what’s best for Sunny and Be and, if he’s being honest with himself, for him and Violet, too. He knows it’s not normal or healthy to spend even a year, let alone longer, with only three other children for company. But, well—(Or: Klaus has trouble adapting to the notion of leaving the island.)
Relationships: Klaus Baudelaire & Sunny Baudelaire & Violet Baudelaire & Beatrice Snicket
Kudos: 18





	sea & space

**Author's Note:**

> New fandom, hi! Spoilers for "The End" (TV series) and _The Beatrice Letters_ (books).

They’ve been on the _Beatrice_ for an hour now, and Klaus is thinking, as he often does even one year later, about Count Olaf. Olaf had the kind of personality that sucked up all the space in whatever room he was in, leaving none left over for any of the Baudelaire children, let alone Klaus. Klaus is quiet and careful, and he wouldn’t say he _shrinks_ before others, but his loudest loud can’t seem to make itself heard to anyone but his siblings and his—

Adoptive daughter? Unofficial niece? Littlest sister? Klaus doesn’t know how he should describe Baby Be. There’s no word he knows of that would here mean a one-year-old fellow orphan that a teenage boy has been raising with the help of his biological sisters, one of whom is practically a baby herself.

And Klaus would have been perfectly happy to continue raising her there on the island with Violet and Sunny, but a deal is a deal, and they’d all agreed after Baby Be was born only to stay until the next Decision Day, when the tide rose enough that they could leave. Klaus knows that leaving is what’s best for Sunny and Be and, if he’s being honest with himself, for him and Violet, too. He knows it’s not normal or healthy to spend even a year, let alone longer, with only three other children for company. But, well—

Klaus spent a great deal of time after the fire that killed his parents, and after Olaf, searching for a sanctuary to share with his sisters, and he’d felt like they’d finally found it there on the island, once it had been emptied of Ishmael and his people. It wasn’t that he didn’t have to go to school—Klaus loved and, indeed, missed school—or that there were no adults around telling him what to do—Klaus had to learn enormous self-discipline, even more than he’d already had, to learn how to be a father-brother-caregiver to Baby Be. (Being one of only two stable figures in Sunny’s life after the deaths of their parents didn’t quite count. Sunny had always been extraordinarily mature for her age, and well-behaved enough that Klaus and Violet never really had to discipline her. The thought of disciplining Sunny like a guardian, like a _parent_ , makes Klaus feel a little funny inside.) No: it was that there were no Count Olaf or Esmé Squalor out to make their lives miserable, no Mr. Poe or Aunt Josephine not believing them when Klaus warned them that Olaf was back in their lives, no Jerome or Hector too anxiously afraid of conflict to speak out on the Baudelaires’ behalf.

“Klaus?” asks Sunny, tugging on his pant leg, and he pauses rowing, passing his oars to Violet, and smiles sadly.

“I’m just not sure we’re doing the right thing by leaving,” he says with a sigh. “Everyone we know who’s still out there has let us down.”

“Except the Quagmires,” says Violet, and Klaus twists his lips.

“Except the Quagmires. But they’re off in the sky in a self-sustaining hot air mobile home, not waiting for us at the austere academy or the slippery slope where we knew them. Besides, shouldn’t the only people we _need_ in order to be happy be each other?”

Violet shrugs. “I think it’s wiser to choose something or someone than to need them, don’t you?” she reasons.

“But _I_ need _you_ ,” Klaus insists. “ _All_ I need is all of you.”

When the ship wrecks, later, and they lose Baby Be, he’ll wish Violet listened, but for now, his stomach gives a guilty, selfish churn as Violet looks away and continues to row across the sparkling blue sea.


End file.
